Category Archives: Biomass

Distribution – why it is so hard to add E15 or E85 at a gas station

Posted on June 30, 2020 by

Preface. One of the huge hurdles to shifting from oil to “something else” is the chicken-or-egg problem of no one buying a new-fuel vehicle with few places to get it, so few are made, so service stations don’t add the … Continue reading →

Posted in Biofuels | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Movie review of Michael Moore’s “Planet of the Humans”

Posted on May 1, 2020 by

Preface. This documentary was made by Jeff Gibbs, a writer and environmentalist, with Michael Moore as the executive producer. This movie is worth watching, and an entertaining and quick way to understand why rebuildable “renewables” are neither green or a … Continue reading →

Posted in Alternative Energy, Biomass, Coal, Natural Gas, Solar, Wind | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

When wood once again becomes our main energy source, how long will it last?

Posted on January 23, 2020 by

Preface. Since we’re going back to wood as our main energy and infrastructure source after fossil fuels deplete, I thought it would be interesting to try to get an idea of how wood stacks up against other energy resources (below).   … Continue reading →

Posted in Nate Hagens, Where to Be or Not to Be, Wood | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Generating electricity with biomass at utility-scale in California limited to direct combustion in small 50 MW plants

Posted on January 20, 2020 by

Preface. It’s obviously much easier and more energy efficient to set logs on fire for heat and electricity than to turn them into ethanol.   Burning biomass can’t do much to solve our energy crisis.  To produce just 10% of … Continue reading →

Posted in Biomass, Electric Grid | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Steam powered farm tractors

Posted on January 17, 2020 by

Preface. Steam engines weren’t very efficient, 10 to 20% at best, which is why they went away beginning around 1920 when oil-powered engines came along.  At the very best steam engines for transportation reached 10 to 20% efficiency. They were … Continue reading →

Posted in Biomass-powered Steam Engines | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Charcoal for the high heat needed in manufacturing after peak oil

Posted on January 11, 2020 by

Preface. De Decker (2011) writes: “A large share of energy consumed worldwide is by heat. Cooking, space heating and water heating dominate domestic energy consumption. In the UK, these activities account for 85% of domestic energy use, in Europe for … Continue reading →

Posted in Industrial Heat, Peak Biofuels, Wood | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Wood, the fuel of preindustrial societies, is half of EU renewable energy

Posted on October 19, 2019 by

Preface: By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood. In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts for about half of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption. Although … Continue reading →

Posted in Wood | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

European Power plants are burning American forests

Posted on July 17, 2019 by

Preface.   Incredibly, this article doesn’t address the fact that after you cut down a forest and convert the wood into pellets destined to be burned in European furnaces for “clean energy”, the next forest won’t grow back with nearly as … Continue reading →

Posted in CO2 and Methane, Deforestation, Wood | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology

Posted on February 23, 2019 by

Preface.  I read this book mainly to find out where “grassoline” stood. Scientists thought 10 years ago that we could recreate the termite biota system of digesting biomass to create biofuels.  But this appears to be far in the future … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Wood | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology

60 minutes promotes biomass scam

Posted on January 11, 2019 by

Preface. Hey 60 minutes, do some fact checking first. Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, … Continue reading →

Posted in Biomass, Far Out | Tagged , , | 2 Comments